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liveBooks Ambassador Marcela Taboada’s exhibit, Sanmigueleñas, is currently running through the end of January at the Centro Cultural San Pablo in Oaxaca, Mexico. 

These Mexican girls are daughters of farmers who learned how to grow vegetables organically. They are the future mothers who will transmit to their children how to stop the use and abuse of pesticides and to eat healthy. I photographed them the day that the harvest was done. My idea was to raise awareness that we all belong to Mother Earth and that by having a healthy and conscious society we can respect our planet in this globalized world.

Due to lack of information, children are fed sweets and processed drinks that affect their physical development. Although corn is the basis of our diet, at schools and other institutions, junk food abounds.

I decided to make these portraits of girls and young Zapotecs of San Miguel del Valle, a district of Tlacolula in Oaxaca, when the harvest of an organic garden that participated in the global collective project “I Have a Dream” was made. The vegetables they carry as “crowns” are what they themselves planted, irrigated, tended and harvested with their parents. My intention is to raise awareness to all women that we are related to land and fertility. We feed our children who will carry this message to future generations. I consider it very important to rescue organic home gardens that help make a healthy and conscious society, obtaining a sustainable supply in this globalized world.